Tuesday, June 12, 2012

As a matter of disclosure I must confess to conservative
tendencies. They manifest themselves as membership in the Republican Party,
that rag-tag but august collection of –isms often confused with big cigars,
private jets and seven-figure private sector employment. More accurately, my
particular flavor of this pathology is personal freedom, common defense and
deference to established law as opposed to outcome-based judicial fiat. Yet,
somehow, I and mine have become the enemy of all I hold dear.

I am…gasp…a public
employee.

In circles both big and small within the conservative
movement I have become anathema, a pariah, a parasitic creature both slovenly
and voracious. I work a “non-punishing schedule” (Ann Coulter),
am “overpaid” (The
Wall Street Journal) and receive lavish, nearly gluttonous fringe benefits
(Powerline). Visit the comments section of nearly any national conservative
blog, offer a suggestion that public employee pay is not our biggest problem and
wait to be pummeled. A guy from Minnesota who has “started a number of
businesses” informed me that government was “way too big” and should be trimmed
by firing significant portions of the inept workforce.